Resource Information

The item A girl's guide to missiles : growing up in America's secret desert, Karen Piper represents a specific, individual, material embodiment of a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in East Baton Rouge Parish Library.

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The China Lake missile range in the Mojave Desert was created during the Second World War, and has always been shrouded in secrecy. But people who make missiles and other weapons are regular working people, with domestic routines and everyday dilemmas, and four of them were the Piper family. Her dad designed the Sidewinder. Once, when a missile nose needed to be taken offsite for final testing, her mother loaded it into the trunk of the family car, set off down a Los Angeles freeway, and even stopped off at the mall, leaving the missile in the parking lot. Piper's memoir also reaches back to her father's World War II flights with contraband across Europe. -- Adapted from publisher info

The China Lake missile range in the Mojave Desert was created during the Second World War, and has always been shrouded in secrecy. But people who make missiles and other weapons are regular working people, with domestic routines and everyday dilemmas, and four of them were the Piper family. Her dad designed the Sidewinder. Once, when a missile nose needed to be taken offsite for final testing, her mother loaded it into the trunk of the family car, set off down a Los Angeles freeway, and even stopped off at the mall, leaving the missile in the parking lot. Piper's memoir also reaches back to her father's World War II flights with contraband across Europe. -- Adapted from publisher info

Summary

A young woman who came of age with missiles presents a poignant, surreal and honest look at growing up on one of the most secretive weapons installations on Earth